Yes Aaron is a great guy. A business partner, my wife and myself had dinner with him in Chicago in '04. He is a class act. Congrats Aaron.
I've never had the pleasure to meet the man, but his demeanor in his posts and webinar I watched give the impression that he is a class act as you say. Sounds corny but I do believe good things happen to good people. Trade well.
Virgin, Schindler Trading can advertise because we are a registered CTA (commodity trading advisor). The "registered" part is what makes it okay to advertise, or in the words of the NFA (National Futures Association) regulations "hold ourselves out to the public" as a CTA. Can you advertise in all 50 States or even international? For example, through news paper, TV, online ad, etc? Do you need to registered your CTA business with each State?
You're not just asking if it is possible, you're asking if it is legal. And I'm uncomfortable offering legal advice because I'm not a securities attorney. If I did answer, I might not know what I am talking about and you might rely on that possibly incorrect information and then you might get in hot water and then you'll be angry at me. You might seek to recover any damages from me. Yuck. That would be lousy. So I'm just going to recommend you contact the NFA, SEC, and/or a securities attorney.
While on this "legal" note, is it really true (as someone had posted a few months ago on this thread) that legal and accounting and compliance expenses are a huge hit on your P&L ? It seems to me that there are now many, many hedge fund service firms out there hungry for business.....so that means lower fees. Am I right ?
I don't think the person was talking about Schindler Trading. At Schindler Trading we do our own fund administration in-house. So far, the cost of legal, accounting, and compliance has been included in our 2% management fee and investors have paid nothing additional. The only thing we can't do ourselves is our annual audit, but this only dings our returns by about 0.07% per year. The most significant hit to our P&L (next to trading losses) is exchange fees. They're too high. Aaron Schindler Schindler Trading
Thanks, GTS! I see you noticed our website was updated, as I haven't sent out our performance update email yet. Very observant!
Syswizard, it appears you haven't ever invested with a commodity fund ("CPO") or hedgefund. If you had, you would have received offering documents and disclosure documents which present these numbers in detail. Their purpose is to allow prospective investors to judge whether or not the expenses represent an unduly large overhead cost. CPO's, for example, are required to include a "Break-Even Table" showing the amount of gross returns necessary to produce a net return of +0.00% (breakeven). Standard line-items are Offering and Organizational Expenses Operating and Administrative Expenses Brokerage Commissions Management Fees Interest Income (offsets costs) Third Party Selling Commissions The fact that people continue to invest with hedgefunds and CTA's, even after reading a detailed breakdown of costs & expenses, conclusively demonstrates there are many investors who find these costs acceptable.